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August 18, 2009
I mentioned that I'd photographing down and around the new development along the Port River estuary in the previous post. So I have been looking for photographers who approach the subject differently to me. One is Michael Keena's series on the coal-fired Ratcliffe Power Station that dominates the sky in Nottinghamshire, England.
Micael Keena, Ratcliffe Power Station, Study 55, Nottinghamshire, England, 2000
Kenna first began photographing the power station in the early 1980s, and over the past several years he has visited the site many times. The work is characteristic by strong form, long exposures and night imagery.
He says in an interview in Double Exposure that he is interested in the relationship and juxtaposition between the landscape and the structures that we humans leave behind. I look for traces of the past, atmospheres and stories that are left for us to decipher and decode.
Michael Keena, Ratcliffe Power Station, Study 63, Nottinghamshire, England, 1989
He says that he prefers:
suggestion over description. I like to use the analogy of haiku poetry where just a few elements act as catalysts for one's imagination. Often I make long time exposures so that detailed water becomes floating mist, clouds in the sky become blurred masses of tonality and a populated scene becomes empty. The world is pretty chaotic, seemingly always speeding up and getting louder and more visually dense.
His black and white images transform familiar locations into places of ambiguous intrigue. The words "ghost-like presence” and phrase an "ominous beauty a little bit fraught with danger” suggest the approach. What is avoided is the direct, the explicit and the confrontational.
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